has any 3rd party media player venders(JRiver,Kodi or whoever) investigated whether FCC now has the authority to require video stream venders(Neflix,Amazon,Hulu) to publish standardized APIs?
It is due to one of the FCC regulations on Cable TV providers that we now have such wonderful devices like HDHomerun etc. That regulation says Cable TV venders must provide customers with M-Cards when asked, so they cannot forcefully bundle the delivery hardware with the content they sell. They must allow 3rd parties to compete in the delivery device market.
Now that FCC has become the regulator of the broad band internet, maybe with enough noise, it could rule that the content steamers cannot bundle the delivery software with the content they sell and must let 3rd parties, like JRiver, compete in the delivery device market?
I don't think Netflix or Amazon would voluntarily hand over the control over delivery software. There are valid concerns, like copy-rights, quality assurance, band-width optimization. But I don't see any reason why these cannot be implemented through well thought out interface protocols.
Pretty easy to find the threads in here explaining why this is now not possible.
When you get a sec - call Netflix and ask them why they pulled their API. Do not blame MC for this one.
VP